California Biographies
Source:
History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California
by: C M Gidney - Santa Barbara. Benjamin Brooks - San Luis Obispo.
Edwin M Sheridan - Ventura
Volumes II - Lewis Publishing Company, Chicago, ILL., 1917
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
MILO M. POTTER. Through no one medium have the manifold attractions of California been brought
so distinctly to the favorable attention of the world as through the magnificent hotel accommodations
the state has afforded to the tourists and to those who pass a portion of the year in this section of the
Union. Among those who have contributed much to the unrivalled hotel attractions and
accommodations of Southern California a place of relative precedence must consistently be accorded
to Milo Milton Potter, the able and popular proprietor of the fine Santa Barbara hotel that bears his
name and the management of which has given him place as one of the representative hotel men of
America.
Mr. Potter was born at Dundee, Monroe County, Michigan, on the 19th of May, 1854, and is a scion of
one of the honored pioneer families of that historic county of the southern part of the Wolverine
State. He is a son of Alfred and Betsy Ann (Hecock) Potter, both natives of Vermont and
representatives of staunch old colonial families of New England, both families having given gallant
soldiers to the Continental Line in the War of the Revolution. Alfred Potter, who was born at Rutland,
Vermont, became one of the early settlers of Monroe County, Michigan, where he developed one of
the largest and finest farms in the state and where he continued to reside until his death, in 1864, his
devoted wife having passed to eternal rest in the late ‘50s, when their son, Milo M., of this review,
was little more than an infant.
Milo M. Potter was doubly orphaned when he was a lad of about ten years, but the family estate was
such that he was not denied the best of educational advantages. After availing himself of the
privileges afforded in the public schools he was matriculated in the great University of Michigan, at
Ann Arbor, in which he was graduated as a member of the class of 1877 and from which he received
the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In initiating his independent business career he went to the State of
Florida, and after there devoting one year to fruit-growing he engaged in the buying and ginning of
cotton, with which line of enterprise he there continued his association four years. He then served his
novitiate in the hotel business, his first two years of experience having been gained in Florida, after
which he was for a time connected with one of the leading hotels at Atlantic City, New Jersey. Four
years thereafter found him identified with the hotel business in the City of Philadelphia, and in 1888 he
came to California and became connected with the Westminster Hotel in the City of Los Angeles. With
this hotel he continued as an able and popular executive for a period of seven and one-half years, and
that at a period when Southern California was just beginning to come into its own in the matter of
popular recognition of its splendid attractions for tourists and as a place of winter residence. While still
connected with the Westminster Mr. Potter effected the erection of the Hotel Van Nuys, at the
corner of Fourth and Main streets, Los Angeles, and this he successfully conducted as one of the
leading hotels of the metropolis of Southern California for a period of fifteen years. He then sold the
property and business to Edward L. Potter, who was not a kinsman, though of the same family name.
While still a resident of Los Angeles Mr. Potter conceived the idea of building a modern hotel of the
best grade in Santa Barbara, and results have proved most fully the excellence of his judgment in
bringing this enterprise into being. Believing that such a hotel would meet a distinct popular demand,
he effected the organization of a stock company that was incorporated with a capital of $1,000,000,
and in 1901 was initiated the work of building the splendid hotel, the same having been completed in
eleven months and ten days and this making a record in the building of a hotel of such large
proportions in so brief a period of time. Not only was the building completed within the time noted
but it was also fully furnished and opened to the public with the best of appointments, facilities and
service. A large business deal recently consummated regarding this hotel was fully given in a local
publication and is here inserted:
“While the hotel property comes under his jurisdiction as sole owner, the deal having been quietly
completed the latter part of September, Milo M. Potter, president of the Potter Hotel Company, will
retain his present business associates as members of a board of directors. The buildings and grounds
represents an investment of $1,200,000, it was said.
“Though representing the interests formerly owning large blocks of the stock in the company, Col D. T.
Perkins, vice president and chairman of the board, Richard Bard, Tod Ford, Jr., of Pasadena, Otto
Gerberding, Mrs. Nellie M. Potter and A. A. Rossetti, Jr., secretary and auditor, will continue to serve
on the board.
“While the deal makes me the sole owner of the property I have asked my former associates to
continue in their same respective positions for counsel and advice, because of their loyalty to me
during the first fourteen years of the hotels existence, said Mr. Potter today.
“There will be no re-organization of the company or a change in the hotel staff, things will remain just
as they have been. There will also be no change in the policy by which the Potter hotel has built up an
enviable reputation as being one of the foremost exclusive hotels in the United States.
“The Conference which resulted in the sale of the property was attended by Col. Perkins, Richard Bard
and Otto Gerberding, representing the Bard estate, and Tod Ford, Jr., representing the Ford estate.
The deal was made on a cash consideration according to Mr. Potter.
“The Potter hotel was built fourteen years ago by the above named interests, Ex-Senator Thomas R.
Bard and Tod Ford, Sr., having been on the original board of directors with Messrs. Potter and Perkins,
who were the real founders and builders of the hostelry.
“The property comprises 30 acres of grounds, containing gardens on which have been expended
$150,000, and the building.
“Mr. Potter, who has been general manager and president since the organization of the company, is
one of the pioneer hotel men of the west, having built and operated the Hotel Van Nuys in Los
Angeles for 15 years.”ť
The Potter Hotel is a building of six stories, is 600 feet in length, the main building, with the power
plant and laundry and the quarters for the hotel employes, covering a tract of about seven acres. The
hotel is situated on a small hill, about 800 feet back from the ocean, with a commanding view, and it
has accommodations for the entertaining of 1,000 guests. The dining room has a seating capacity for
750 persons, greater than that of any other hotel west of New York City, and with the ideal
arrangement of small and more intimate tables it is doubtful if any hotel in the world can equal the
Potter in this important domain of service. About the hotel is a beautiful park of thirty acres, and in
every department the house is a model in luxurious appointments and perfect service, so that the
Potter well merits its reputation and is to be consistently designated as one of the finest hotels not
only on the Pacific Coast but also in the entire Union. The part of the hotel has been developed into
one of the most idyllic in the world, with a wealth of semi-tropical foliage, including palms, shrubs and
other ornamental vegetation, and with the landscape effect heightened by its houses of glass and
other consistent construction. The entire place is one of Americas ideal beauty-spots, and attests
most fully the initiative and executive ability of Mr. Potter and his capacity for the achievement of
large things, besides which his capacity for the handling of manifold details with exactitude and
dispatch is almost marvelous. He gave his personal supervision to the construction of the hotel
building and to all matters pertaining to the development and improvement of the grounds, even as
he has had the general management of the fine hotel from the time of its completion and has been
president of the company controlling the property since the time of incorporation.
Mr. Potter is a member of the directorate of the Farmers & Merchants National Bank of Los Angeles, a
position which he has held continuously since 1898, and he is one of the largest stockholders in the
Western Union Oil Company, one of the most successful corporations engaged in the development
work and general operations in the California oil fields. His political allegiance is given to the republican
party, he is affiliated with the Masonic fraternity, and he is a popular member of numerous
representative social organizations in Southern California, including the Jonathan, the California, the
Athletic, the University, the Driving and County clubs of Los Angeles, and the Santa Barbara Country
Club and La Cumbre Club, of Santa Barbara. He is specially well known as a fancier of fine horses, and
he maintains a stable of splendid driving and riding horses, besides having others eligible for the
making of excellent turf records. Mr. Potter has never manifested any semblance of the sporting
proclivities so common to the American type of successful business men, and thus he has never
associated himself with fishing, hunting, cards, billiards or with gambling or speculative matters. He
confesses to a love of the farm and the untrammeled life out of doors, but he is sane, direct and
normal in all of his personal characteristics, genial and buoyant of temperament, and well worthy of
unequivocal popularity that is his. Mr. Potter is the owner of a splendidly improved farm of 320 acres,
eight miles distant from Santa Barbara and near the Village of Goleta. Here he has developed a fine
dairy enterprise, besides raising the best grades of cattle and swine.
Mr. Potter has been one of the worlds constructive workers and has achieved a large measure of
success through his well ordered endeavors. His greatest success has been gained in a field of
enterprise that has recorded innumerable failures-the hotel business. It is somewhat remarkable that
while living in the great West, where are centered the most attractive of mining investments, he has
never deviated from his course to the extent of investing a single dollar in mining projects or
enterprises. When recently asked to explain what he attributed as the specific medium of his success
in the hotel business, Mr. Potter stated that he felt assured that his advancement had been
compassed through the agencies of energy, hard work and natural generalship in directing the work of
others, it having been his good fortune to gain the respect and esteem of his employees and thus to
receive on their part the most loyal co-operations and service.
Mr. Potter is a man who is by no means given to subtleties or superstition, but clings insistently and
loyally to the nineteenth day of the month as one of special significance in his career. He was born in
the 19th of May, and every event of special importance in his life has touched the number nineteen.
He left for Florida on the 19th of the month, engaged in his first business enterprise on the 19th,
signed his first contract on the 19th; the construction of the Potter Hotel was instituted on the 19th
and the building was completed and opened on the 19th, even as had previously been his Los Angeles
hotel, the Van Nuys; and, more than all, his engagement and his marriage were recorded on the 19th.
Practical politics and public office had no lure for Mr. Potter but in his civic attitude he is emphatically
liberal, progressive and public-spirited. He has done much to foster the advancement of Santa Barbara
and is one of the most popular and valued citizens of this fine little city.
On the 19th of November 1901, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Potter to Mrs. Nellie M. Jones.
No children have been born of this union but by here former marriage Mrs. Potter has one daughter,
Miss Nina Maude Jones.